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Was it Einstein who said that insanity was looking at something over and over again and expecting a different result? The recent debate in the UK which has caused so much uproar over a new deal that the British PM has struck with Brussels can be seen in a similar vein. The new accord with the EU might seem vague and in places almost incongruous to any big plans the UK might have over the next decade. But for the political elite it was important. Starmer needed to score some points with Brits by giving them visa free-travel at EU airports and netting the possibility of bigger defence procurement, while Britain’s fishermen were dealt a kipper. For British firms to have less red tape in getting their products into the EU market might seem inconsequential given that many have gone out of business since the UK left the European Union, as Britain continues to have its trade reduced year after year, while some predict the losses to the British economy to be close to 100Bn pounds a year.

The right, which in the UK simply means the conservatives plus Nigel Farage’s semi-professional protest party called ‘Reform’, of course were up in arms and were quick to fire off their appropriate clichés for soundbite hungry hacks, poised with mouths ajar like hungry chicks waiting for their mushed-up worm.

But there is a much more salient point here and we need to be able to appreciate irony when it is served up. Nigel Farage in many ways is a bit of a genius. His master stroke in deception is fooling the British public that he had nothing to do with Brexit, when, in fact he was the one who brought Brexit to Britain’s shores. His detachment from it is amazing and the gullible British public are barely able to blame him for it, allowing him the supreme irony of stating in media interviews that “Brexit has failed”. It is rather like the surgeon who convinces you that your daughter needs the vital operation but when she dies on the operating table, he simply shrugs his shoulders as though it was really nothing to do with him. “Nothing to do with me mate, I just cut her open and let her bleed to death. Deal with it.”

What this debate is showing us is that there is an extraordinary amount of stupidity within politics in the UK these days and the British public are driving this with their own confusion and desperation. They want change but they have no idea of what this could mean, in political terms. Of course, they want better lifestyles and more cash in their pockets but they have given up on investing any of their time even reading newspapers and bothering to understand important issues in preference for overeating, watching TV or binging on their social media. The apathy has created a choice between the most incompetent government in Downing Street ever and a lame opposition who sensationally were unable to block illegal immigration or breathe new life into a post-Brexit Britain, the Conservatives. An ‘alternative’ is a politico who most know is a charlatan at best, commonly called a ‘grifter’ who can only offer a popular narrative. That’s all. Most people, even Reform supporters know that Farage will not stick to his policies if he ever got into power, but that is almost the requisite comfort that most folks in the UK will take, such is the appalling state of British politics.

The recent outcry from Farage attacking Starmer is predictable, hilarious and obscene. It’s easy to forget where Farage came from and who or what made him what he is today: the European Union. It was the EU which kept giving him more seats in EU elections under the proportional representation system which favours fringe parties; it was the EU which paid him a massive salary plus perks; it was the EU which subsidized media which he exploited to promote himself politically with a sole goal in mind: to exchange his MEP seat for a national one. Farage was literally created by Brussels – an institution he claims he loathes as it was a good line for a lot of suckers in the UK. Farage is a product of the EU and he was happy to play the role of the in-house recalcitrant buffoon while all along federalists like Jean-Claude Junсker gave him bear hugs. Such was the delight they got from him, so they could parade him to the rest of the world and say ‘look, see, the EU’s is really a democracy as we support all voices and views!”.

For Farage to dish out this scathing opprobrium to Starmer is supreme irony on a whole new level. Would we accept lectures on human rights from Fred West? Or guidance on the economy from those who have never run a company? Farage stands tall in this madhouse of perverse logic as the unemployed toothless dentist giving the nation advice on oral hygiene.

Only a fool never changes his mind. There is no doubt that Farage’s party probably picked up more members over the days which followed after the new deal struck by Starmer. What Britain needs badly is prescience and pragmatism. Brexit is without any doubt a failure on a grand scale which cannot be blamed on Boris Johnson alone. Farage also played a key role. The British need to swallow this bitter pill and move on for the sake of the generations to come. They need to admit this failure and think more clearly, devoid of passion.

Are we going to bring to power someone who brought us Brexit, then wrung his hands of it when it didn’t suit his political patina, then continues to insist that Britain is better off out of the EU when the country heads towards the abyss? Farage is about Farage. His lusting for power, money and notoriety outweigh his political abilities 100-fold and so it is high time that the conservatives step up to the mark and take a more grown-up view of a post Brexit UK and how cherry-picking a better deal with the EU might not be so abhorrent as previously thought.

Even politically this is a smart move as come the next general election in the UK, the British people will be united on only one issue, getting Labour out. Enough feral experimentation. But will they jump out of the frying pan into the hot oil by taking an even crazier gamble on Farage, whose mantra can be simply summed up “Boris’s Brexit didn’t work, but mine will. Hopefully”? How many days would Farage be in Downing Street before the graft which is responsible for record number of immigrants – yes folks it’s a huge billion-pound business – stuff a few hundred grand into Nigel’s coat pockets and we find the immigration policy he heralded as a candidate was nothing more than cheap bullshit, along with all his other lies, like free speech or being friends of Trump?

Farage is a deep state puppet who is coin-operated and can’t be trusted with the nation’s economy. The move by Starmer to bring the EU a little closer, while helping British business and Britain’s tourists, was a smart move as the real enemy of the UK, after all, is not Brussels, but Paris. It might buy him some political collateral to lean on Macron to get some service from the French police for the money that is sent from the UK to France. It sounds nuts but it’s not half as crazy as this blinded dogma that “Brexit hasn’t worked, but we must continue to self-harm ourselves and chant our way out of it like cultists on a weekend retreat”. Cultism isn’t the answer to Brexit failure and neither is Farage. We need grown-ups back in politics and for the amateurs to stay on the periphery where they are most suited with their predictable, puerile narratives.